The Digestive System And The Digestive System

Try to imagine yourself, sitting at lunch, enjoying your sandwich and a few strawberries along the way. Once you are done your delicious meal, you take one last drink of orange juice and head to your next class. In a few minutes you are thinking about your upcoming visit to the mall. You've completely forgotten about that sandwich you had just ate. But it is still sitting in your stomach!! Now how does this work, how did your body absorb all that food? It all goes back to the digestive system.

http://kidshealth.org/kid/cancer_center/HTBW/digestive_system.html ( I didnt copy direct quotes, however I had used the idea of the beginning in my research on the digestive system to help the reader better understand the system)

The whole purpose of your digestion system is to break down and absorb the energy and nutrients it needs from the food you eat. The sandwich, strawberries, and orange juice you have just consumed is going through this process right now! The process of digestion begins with ingestion, this is when you take a bite of what you have planned to eat. When you took a bite of your sandwich and strawberry slices you were essentially beginning the process of digestion. Second comes the job of your digestion, which is a much more time-consuming and complex process for your digestive system. It begins once you have began chewing your food. There are two known types of digestion, these include Mechanical digestion, which is when you “physically break down the food into smaller pieces”, for instance chewing a burger and having it result in several chunks, and Chemical Digestion which is when you chemically break down your food, such as eating a slice of br...

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...ve eaten, to break down the food into a liquid mixture and to slowly empty that liquid mixture into the small intestine. Once the bolus has entered your stomach it begins to be broken down with the help of the strong muscles and gastric juices which are located in the walls of your stomach. The gastric juices are made up of hydrochloric acid, water, and mucus- and the main enzyme inside of your stomach is what is known as pepsin, which needs to be surrounded in an acidic setting in order to do its job, that is to break down protein. Once the bolus has been inside of your stomach for long enough it begins to form into a liquid called chyme, and what keeps the chyme from flowing back into our esophagus are ring shaped muscles known as sphincters located at the beginnings and ends of the stomach and they have the task of controlling the flow of solids and liquids.